Cam Hooke’s Collingwood Life – Round 18

This week: Round 18; counting Saturday, six to go before the Finals. Versus Melbourne. A proper ‘Saturday arvo’ game – Saturday, 1 August; bounce 2.10pm, at the G.

US and THEM

To say we need this to stay in the hunt would be the understatement of the year. After five Losses in a row, regardless of by how much or how well we played, we are badly in need of some points. Betting: We are the favourites (again), but justifiably on this occasion, – $1.30 to $3.55.

Check out Ladbrokes prices for this round

Them: Melbourne are sitting at 15th with no chance of making the Finals this year. Their percentage is sitting at 77.6%. I don’t know much about Melbourne’s line-up, apart from Harry and Dawesy, and Jack Watts’ introduction to AFL Footy against the Pies a few years back, now. Of course they did beat Geelong, at Kardinia Park, in Round 12 (look at the stats – good 1st Quarter, then on par for rest), were close to Essendon in Round 15 and beat Brisbane in Round 16. St Kilda beat them last week. Some names appear fairly regularly amongst their Best – Viney, Vince, Watts, Gawn and Jones. Is Sam Frost the brother of ‘our Jack’ – same ears? Comments?

Us. We are sitting at 11th, one and a half games outside the Eight. Other games, now, start (actually, continue) to be important – GWS are above us, but have Freo this weekend – expect them to lose and drop below us. Geelong, above us have the Lions – expect them to win and stay above us. North have Carlton – expect them to win and stay above us (Carlton wouldn’t do us a favour by winning, would they?). Port have St Kilda – expect them to win following us up. The single redeeming fact in our favour is our good percentage – 114.9%, giving us the equivalent of a game advantage over those teams around us. Oh yes, just to finalise the picture, Carlton are third last with a percentage of 66.6%, which is marginally, mathematically slightly higher than half ours (who says I’m not vindictive). So with a Win this Round, given the other results are as expected, we should be sitting 9th, facing 16th placed Carlton the following week (maybe with Trav and Elliott back and Reid in). We have six games in which to look at options and alternatives we may want to apply when we get into the Finals – we should actively pursue these, now. A list of things to do this week? My bucket list of suggestions as to what needs to happen this week are:

Forward Line: White – OUT. Karnezis – IN. Pathway to goal needs to be multi-pronged, not a single path. Each major target (Moore, Karnezis and Grundy / Witts) needs to be surrounded by the ‘crumbers’;

Midfield: Adams – IN, Dwyer – IN. Tagging roles. Onto whom? Not sure;

Backline. Greater speed into the Backline – Scharenberg and Marsh vice Tooves and Browny. There were way too many occasions when Footscray’s drive out of the Centre or forward from their Backline found unattended targets and easy goals – heartbreakingly easy given how hard we had to fight to score from our Entries into our 50; and kick-ins – these are still not fluid or certain enough (for a comparison, have a look at Heater Shaw’s kick-ins for GWS – much, much better);

What else? As always, ferocity, the attack on the ball, for the whole game. To give credit, this has been pretty good over the last five matches. We have fallen down in our precision handling – see our Disposal Efficiency numbers. Our ferocity has been good – see the same numbers for the opposition (success for us is reflected by poor numbers for the opposition), our Tackles and our Contested Possessions at each of the Match Centre sites (see below under Previews, just hit the Back arrow to look at the previous game Reports).

Feeling depressed? To make you feel better go and look at the ‘Top 5’ from last week.

Adam Goodes. I’m going to restrain myself from making comment here, except to say that the clip I saw of Goodes ‘marking and running on to goal’ should clearly have been judged a push in the back against him (both hands firmly in his opponent’s back; his opponent pushed below the flight of the ball). Was the booing directed at Goodes or the flawed umpiring? We have seen many, many occasions where a player’s action on the field has resulted in the crowd booing him for the rest of the game – gets back to good umpiring. Encouraging Indigenous players comes with performance, as demonstrated by the pair of Brownlow Medals. Who would be critical of Neon Leon (we still miss him for our kick-ins), Andrew Krakouer, Brad Dick or Travis Varcoe (what an example of commitment Travis sets the rest of the team every week. See Bucks’ view.

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